Somlyo

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I took part in the annual Somlyo pilgrimage. "Ave Maria" echoed through the high mountain valley as it has every Pentecost for 440 years. Horsemen in wool Hussars uniforms, cardinals in jewel-tone robes and peasant farmers in traditional costumes held hands under a sweltering sun during solemn prayers. If it weren't for the bikinis, the low-flying airplane overhead, the baseball caps embroidered with "USA" and the omnipresence of cell phones, it could have been 1567, when Hungarians in this part of Romania first started gathering in the valley near the city of Miercurea-Ciuc for Pentecost. On May 25, 2008, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians from as far away as Lebanon, St. Petersburg, Russia, Sydney, Austria and Miami, Fla., collected for an event called Somlyó (pronounced "shoom-yo"). The day has all the patriotic fervor of the 4th of July and the religious zeal of Easter in Jerusalem.
More than a Christian celebration, Somlyó is also a celebration of Hungarian heritage in the most Hungarian county in Romania, with 300,000 at the pilgrimage.
Somlyo, yo
Current mood: happy
"Ave Maria" echoed through the high mountain valley as it has every Pentecost for 440 years. Horsemen in wool Hussars uniforms, cardinals in jewel-tone robes and peasant farmers in traditional costumes held hands under a sweltering sun during solemn prayers.
If it weren't for the bikinis, the low-flying airplane overhead, the baseball caps embroidered with "USA" and the omnipresence of cell phones, it could have been 1567, when Hungarians in this part of Romania first started gathering in the valley near the city of Miercurea-Ciuc for Pentecost.
On May 25, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians from as far away as Lebanon, St. Petersburg, Russia, Sydney, Austria and Miami, Fla., collected for an event called Somlyó (pronounced "shoom-yo"). The day has all the patriotic fervor of the 4th of July and the religious zeal of Easter in Jerusalem.
Pentecost is celebrated 50 days after Easter and commemorates the gathering of the Apostles to receive the Holy Spirit. The Bible describes how that day they found the courage to spread Christ's teachings.
But more than a Christian celebration, Somlyó is also a celebration of Hungarian heritage in the most Hungarian county in Romania.
My trip to Somlyó commenced with the same general level of confusion that encompasses most of my days in Romania. Living as a Peace Corps volunteer in the nearby town of Bálan, I had no idea what to expect when our host grandmother, who maintains the town Mother Mary shrine, invited my fellow Peace Corps volunteer Tatiana and me to attend some Catholic thing that involved going on a bus somewhere. That's all we got out of her invitation, but we signed up nevertheless.
Saturday morning, we crossed the street from our apartment to Bálan's Catholic church and met up with a woman from the middle school where Tatiana teaches English. She took us into the church, a lovely building with the Virgin Mary in a grotto surrounded by mining tools, a reminder of Balan's mining heritage.
After prayers for a safe journey, the 200-hundred member delegation from Bálan surged onto the buses. Every bus in the area was pressed into service. We sat with one of Tatiana's best pupils and his mother, also a teacher at the middle school.
Only when we reached the highway 10 km from out town did we begin to get a sense of the scale of what we were taking part in. The highway was choked with traffic. To our excitement, among the cars and buses were horse-drawn wagons carrying elderly folks in traditional costumes and the baggage of pilgrims walking, sometimes days, to Somlyó. One wagon carried a band, playing a dirge whose mournful air somehow seemed right despite the excitement and sunshine.
Our bus caught up with the walkers from Bálan, who had left 12 hours before, at 9 am on the outskirts of the host city. We parked on the highway and unfurled our banners, both religious and nationalistic. Led by our baseball-cap wearing, be-robed young priest, we followed a sign proclaiming "Csikbalánbánya" (that's Bálan in Hungarian).
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The walk to Csiksomlyó Cathedral took nearly an hour, first passing among fields of young potato plants and waist-high wheat where men stood peeing despite being flag-bearers and not having a tree to block them then though narrow streets where processions from different directions blended in a joyous confusion of costumes and banners and people. At booths flanking the processions, vendors sold everything from ceramic Virgin Mary statues to souvenir brochures to inflated Scoobey-Doos. We picked up some kirtoskolach, Hungarian tube bread cooked on an open flame and rolled in cinnamon and sugar. The Csiksomlyó cathedral is famous for hosting Somlyó and for the Virgin Mary statue at its alter. The wooden statue is centuries old and credited with many miracles. A staircase on either side of the altar brings the faithful to touch the carving and petition for their hearts' desires. Throughout the temple and into the nearby woods are carved stones thanking Virgin Mary for miracles, children who were dying and didn't, fruitful courtships and sudden turns of material fortunes.